


For What It's Worth

by Lockea, LuthienLuinwe



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Capes, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Courtroom Drama, Dark, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Forced Prostitution, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Police Officer Dick Grayson, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Underage Prostitution, Undercover Missions, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 11:06:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15023225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockea/pseuds/Lockea, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuthienLuinwe/pseuds/LuthienLuinwe
Summary: Officer Dick Grayson knew what it meant to serve and protect. He knew what it meant to sacrifice for the greater good. Or at least he thought he knew those things, once upon a time.Jason Todd was focused on surviving, keeping his head down and his mouth shut because at the end of the day he knew no one ever walked away from his life. Life would've been easier for everyone if the new kid would figure that out already. Except that new kid turned out to be an undercover cop, an undercover cop who got attached to Jason.It was supposed to end with the arrest of Roman Sionis. But for them the end of one nightmare is just the beginning of another.





	For What It's Worth

**Author's Note:**

> Lockea: Here we are! Lu asked for prompts and I gave her this as a prompt, but then I liked this idea so much I asked Lu if she'd be willing to co-write and she was! It's awesome working with her, not just for her stellar dialogue skills and excellent in depth knowledge of the legal system, but because she's also an absolute sweetheart. This story is not for the faint of heart, however. Lu and I have devious things planned for the characters so watch out my friends! As always my trigger warning policy stands. Please please please message one of us if you ever even so much as SUSPECT a scene might be triggering and we'll provide relevant spoilers. 
> 
> Luthien: Words cannot begin to describe how excited I am to be able to co-write this with Lockea. Her descriptive skills are absolutely phenomenal, not to mention her killer personality. As she said, this story is filled with potential triggers. Please, please message us if you have concerns about triggering material, and we will answer with the information you need.

There’s a pulse behind his eyes, bright and blinding as the strobe lights on the dance floor, felt in the bones from the subwoofers near the stage of the club. He’s not here anymore, not really. They’d given him something earlier, little and round and white, a pill that he knew by now not to ask too many questions about.

It was always in the back of his mind, that this might be the one that doesn’t work, the one that ends up killing him instead. But he’d swallowed it dry and offered a million-watt smile and a teasing sway of his hips, heading back towards the dance floor, the john at his back. They dance for a few minutes and then there’s another pulse, another moment and he’s somewhere else again.

Bodies move above him, and he winces in discomfort. Everything feels too real, too raw, and he’s hurting everywhere, but he can’t move, and the music still pulses, somewhere above him on the dance floor. (Hundreds of people in this club and nobody knows what’s going on beneath their feet.)

Another pulse, and this time his eyes open to something different, something not a memory. There’s movement beside him and for a moment he freezes, caught between Here and There, and There is wining. A dark room, a dirty bed, sheets so threadbare there’s holes worn in them and the smell of despair was never something he thought had an actual, physical stench to it. But no, it’s just a moment in time and with the next breath he realizes it’s just Jason lying next to him, lost in sleep. He’s not there. He’s at the manor. The nightmare is over (isn’t it?) and the memories can’t hurt him (can they?).

Dick sits up slowly, the phantom aches, the reminder of the drugs that made everything too real, all of it slips away as he stares around the room. Dinah had given him the technique in session yesterday, to come back to himself and now seems like a good enough time to practice. Light in through the window (it was amazing how quickly he got used to the dark), dust motes scattered in the air. Yesterday’s clothes on the floor, discarded carelessly. He stares at them for several seconds, because for a moment it’s not sweats and a t-shirt, the ones he’s worn yesterday, but club clothes, tight fitting mesh and ripped jeans.

Jason stirs beside him, and for a moment There wins once more. Just Jason, he tries to tell himself. Queen sized bed, not twin. If he listens closely he can hear Alfred downstairs. Quiet. Calm. No strobing lights, no crash of the music around them, no strangers pressed up against him with no room to move. “Hey,” Jason yawns, and Dick frowns when he sees the dark circles under Jason’s eyes, the ones that shouldn’t be there because Jason was only sixteen and was supposed to be happy and not recovering from this mess.

“Hey,” he takes a deep breath, but it still doesn’t feel like he’s getting enough oxygen in his lungs. Manor. Warm lights. Soft bed. Quiet. “Sleep okay?” he asks, even though he knows the answer. Jason had been in it years longer than Dick had. It won’t surprise him if Jason never has a good night’s sleep again.

“Yeah, did you?” Jason responds, but Dick catches the hesitation. Dick should have known better than to ask. They were trained to give the answers everyone else wanted. Sometimes he can still catch himself doing it. He wonders if he can ever break out of it. He doubts Jason can.  It feels a little hopeless from where Dick is sitting. “I’m hungry,” Jason admits when Dick fails to answer. “What do we have to do to get some food around here?”

“Nothing,” The answer comes too quick and Jason flinches backwards, hunches in on himself, eyes cast down. Anyone else and it would be a joke but the memory is too close to the surface, too real. _Hands on his shoulders, pushing him to his knees. There’s something sticky on the floor, but he knows better than to ask what it is. His mouth is dry, and he can already feel his head swimming. “How you going to pay me back for the meal, kid?”_

Dick shakes his head. “Nothing,” He repeats more softly. “Let’s go downstairs and see if Alfred’s made anything. If not, I know where he hides the cereal. The good kind, not whatever the hell Bruce eats.”

He watches as Jason’s eyes light up with the promise of food and carefully gets out of the bed. Sometimes he can still feel everything aching, even though he knows there’s no reason for it to. He stretches and listens as his back pops. He grabs yesterday’s sweats from the floor and pulls them on.

Dick crosses the room, opens his dresser drawer, and finds a pair of pajamas he never remembered owning and tosses them to Jason. “Those are probably too big for you, but they’ll work.” He frowns when Jason just stares at him, eyes dazed and confused. Has he done something wrong? “I mean, I can find something else if you want…”

“It’s fine,” Jason says quickly, too quickly for Dick’s liking. He heads out of the room, wanting to give him some privacy. God knows they hadn’t had any back when… No. He doesn’t want to think about that ever again. Even though he knows he has to. If not today, then soon. There’s a good chance there will be a jury trial and when that happens...

He counts the stairs as he walks down them, trying to keep himself grounded in the moment. Thirteen steps. He tries to focus on each one as he takes it. He keeps his hand on the bannister, still not trusting his balance even though the drugs had been out of his system for weeks. Sometimes it still felt like the world is shaking around him, like the lights are too bright and the sounds are too loud. Those first few days back in the manor, navigating the steps up and down felt more like trying to cross the deck of a boat in the midst of a storm. Everything swayed from one end to another and more than once he’d stumbled, fallen, but never so bad he hurt himself though the fear was always there. Still was, to this day.

Dinah had said the fear would eventually subside, but what did she know anyway?

“Ah, Master Dick,” Alfred greets him, and for a minute Dick freezes. But the voice is Alfred, not _his._ “We were wondering when you’d be up. Breakfast is on the table.”

“Thanks,” Dick mutters. Instead of making his way there, he waits for Jason. He’d only been with them a few days, and Dick is terrified he’ll get lost in the manor. It had overwhelmed Jason at first, and Dick couldn’t blame him for that. He’s lived there for years and still found himself getting lost from time to time. And he was certain that the drug withdrawals weren’t helping either of them.

He glances up when he sees movement at the top of the stairs. Jason had put the pajama pants on backwards, and Dick can’t help but think it’s an act of defiance on Jason’s part. God, they really need to get him his own things…

Alfred, miracle worker that he is, just smiles when he sees Jason at the top of the stairs. “Master Jason,” Alfred greets warmly, a kind smile on his face.  “You must be hungry.”

Unlike with Dick, Jason’s face is closed down, displaying nothing but a placid, neutral expression. He doesn’t respond to Alfred’s question, just moves quietly down the stairs, more slowly than Dick had.

They’d sent him through detox at Gotham General. Both of them actually, but the drug screen for Dick hadn’t been nearly as bad. A little molly, a little bit of illegal stimulants, and some other party drugs. Jason had harder stuff in his veins, had built up enough of a dependence that coming down had meant a full detox, not just a few days in bed wishing for death. No, unlike Dick, Jason was still taking clonidine for his withdrawal symptoms and the doctor had said it would be a while before they felt ready to wean him.

Jason steps past Dick into the kitchen, following after Alfred as if nothing’s wrong (what a lie; everything’s wrong) and for a moment Dick’s somewhere else. Jason’s brushing past him in a completely different outfit, tattered jeans slung low on his hips, some stranger’s hand clasped in his own. His eyes blown wide, pupils non existent, and there’s a white dusting to his skin, crushed pills or something harder, clinging to the sweat from the heated press of bodies pulsing. “Lighten the fuck up,” Jason would snap if Dick looked at him without masking his concern.

There were all too many things that kept Dick awake at night, those horrible months Before. Jason dead of an overdose chief among them.

(“It’s how I’m going anyway.” Jason had said one early morning, curled on his side and shaking as he came down from whatever high he was on the night before. “It doesn’t matter.”)

Shaking the memory from his mind, Dick forces a smile to his face when he notices Alfred looking at him, expression contemplative. “Smells great, Alfred.” He compliments. It’s a lie -- the smell twists his stomach. Nausea is a side effect of his new meds. It makes it hard to keep food down, but compared to Before… well… he has to work past this if he wants to go back to active duty. Can’t enforce the law when his hands shake, and can’t look the part when his uniform hangs off him in a way that makes him feel like a kid playing dress up. Eat, go to therapy, focus on recovery. That’s what the others at the precinct had said. The rest would follow.

Easy for them to say.

They were all under cover for drug busts. Not for that… (Never had anyone young enough to pull it off, Branden had told him when he’d thrown the file on his desk).

They all take a seat at the table, Dick next to Jason, Bruce across from them. Dick sees Jason tense, and he can’t blame him for it. He’s been used all his life, sometimes by men exactly like Bruce. He’d be more concerned if Jason had pretended to act normal (because nothing was normal anymore and it never would be again). “Sleep okay?” Bruce asks, and Dick nods because it’s easier than trying to explain the dreams when they came in broken visuals and twisted sounds.

Dick glances at the pill set beside his glass, a little blue circle with a line running down the middle, the one that made his mind feel fuzzy and his body feel heavy but kept his mind quiet enough to function, at least for a few hours of the day. The rational part of his brain knows it’s for his own good, that the medication will help with the shaking, the flashbacks. The irrational part doesn’t care -- he’s not himself when he’s on drugs, even drugs like this.

He glances at Jason who’s barely touched his food and tries not say anything about the little white bar sitting next to Jason’s glass of orange juice (did Jason even like orange juice? Anything was better than the cheap coffee they’d been given when _he_ needed them sobered up early).

“You need to eat,” Bruce says, and Dick doesn’t miss the flash of a glare in Jason’s eyes. It’s only there for a second, but a second’s long enough. _He_ never would have let Jason get away with that. No one wants a brat with an attitude. Bruce doesn’t seem to notice, or if he does he doesn’t comment. Dick forces himself to smile past the lump forming in his throat.

“Jay,” His voice is low, gentle, hopefully soothing, not unlike the voice he’d use if he was trying to calm a scared child. “Try to eat something, please?”

Jason’s glare is quick and fierce, his temper like a match to dry kindling. “No,” And then, as if to emphasize his point, he shoves the food away from him, already rising to his feet.

“Jason,” Bruce warns, and Dick’s not fast enough to intervene, to de-escalate the situation. He can only watch helplessly as Jason’s fists clench at his sides, bloodless white. “You need to calm down.”

“Yeah, and you need to fuck off,” Jason snaps back. He glances at Dick, who’s just watching him. Dick’s not sure what Jason expects from him, whether it’s for Dick to back Jason up or calm him down, but whatever it is, Jason doesn’t get what he’s searching for. His face darkens and he shoots Dick a glare that cuts deep into his bones. “And fuck you too.”

Bruce opens his mouth to reply but Jason’s already gone, chair knocked backwards in his haste to put as much space between them as possible. Dick watches him go regretfully, but he knows Jason needs time to cool down. Time to process. That’s what everyone keeps saying. “Give it time,” But no one ever tells him how much.

“Don’t,” Dick says, holding a hand up before Bruce has a chance to speak first, words sharp.

Bruce ignores him. “Out of all the ones you could have brought home, you picked _him_?”

“Bruce, not now,” Dick’s too tired for this shit. Too tired to pick a fight with his foster father. Too tired of everything.

“Maybe I should have listened to his social worker. He needs serious help, and I don’t think we can give it to him.”

“Yeah, well maybe I do too.”

Bruce’s stare is hard, and Dick feels a flush of shame beneath the anger. He shouldn’t have snapped. Bruce is trying. Dick refuses to apologize though, meeting his foster father’s eyes steadily. “Maybe you should give up on me too.”

“You know I wouldn’t give up on you. Besides, you’re fine. It’s over,” Bruce insists.

Dick knows that’s not true. Jason had known even before the bust. _“You don’t walk away from this life,”_ Jason had told him. Dick hadn’t believed him at the time, determined that he’d end the case and things would go back to normal. Now he thinks Jason had a point. He’s seen what the system does to kids like him first-hand. They end up right back where they started the second they turn eighteen and their foster parents kick them out: selling their bodies for food in their stomachs. Hell, if they’re lucky they’ll even get a roof over their head, at least for the night.

“And what if I’m not?”

“Dick, you’re fine,” Bruce sighes, voice resigned in a way Dick’s never heard it. And for a moment Dick lets himself imagine how hard the past six months were on him too. But he isn’t fine. He isn’t sure he’ll ever be fine again. And he’ll be damned if he’s going to let anyone decide how he feels ever again.

“And how the hell would you know that?” Dick’s voice breaks. “You weren’t there, Bruce. I was. You don’t get to tell me how I feel or how I am or if I’m okay. You don’t.” He can feel his pulse pounding in his neck and the heat rising to his cheeks. And for a second, just for a second, he wants nothing more than to hit Bruce square in the jaw. But it won’t solve anything. It won’t undo the past six months.

He takes a deep, shaky breath, and pushes away from the table, heading out of the room before Bruce can say anything else.

Jason’s back up in Dick’s bedroom, sitting in the window frame, the glass cracked open as he smokes through what isn’t his first cigarette since breakfast, if the smell is anything to go by. “Alfred’s gonna kill you.” Dick sighs, but he’s too worn out to pick a fight here, and it looks like Jason is too because he just glares back at Dick.

“Bite me,” Jason replies, taking another long drag.

Dick can’t help the small smile that crosses his lips. Jason’s like a cactus -- prickly and dangerous, but hardy and able to weather the long droughts before the storm. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit,” Jason says, like that should be obvious; Dick supposes it should. “Fucking shit. I need a drink.”

“It’s eight in the morning.”

“A fucking mimosa or a bloody mary then,” comes the immediate response. Another drag, this time down to the filter, and Jason flicks the butt out the window. “Isn’t that what rich shits like your dad drink in the morning anyway? Bullshit cocktails out of glasses expensive enough to solve world hunger? Fucking pricks. Think they own the world.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little unfair?” Dick couches the automatic bristle of displeasure that comes with the insinuation in a question. Bruce has his flaws -- outside of his persona as a light hearted socialite, Bruce struggles with genuine displays of his emotions. He’s awkward and blunt when he’s trying to be genuine and more than once those flaws have hurt Dick or damaged their relationship with each other. It was worse when Dick was Jason’s age, because Dick just didn’t know then what he knows now about how to accept his father as a flawed human being. Still, Bruce was Dick’s foster father, his guardian, and that makes him a little bit protective of the older man’s reputation.

He knows -- good God he knows -- what Jason’s experiences with men like Bruce are, but Bruce isn’t _them_.

“He’s trying,” Dick adds with a sigh, dropping down on the edge of the bed, feet tucked up under him. Like this, it’s almost like they’re back in the sorry excuse for a dormitory they’d slept in when they weren’t working. Jason even seems more relaxed, enough that he’s taken a break from smoking, at least for now.

“Bullshit,” Jason replies, but it’s not as sharp as his earlier accusations. “Why the fuck would he even bother with trash like me unless he wants something? It’d be nice if he’d just tell me what he wants so we could quit dancing around. I always hated long foreplay.”

“What if he doesn’t want anything?” Dick asks, instead of pointing out what, to him, is obvious. “What if he just hopes you would eat your breakfast and take your pills without expecting something in return?”

Jason chuckles darkly, glancing over at Dick on the bed with a smile that’s too sharp, too much teeth, and not at all genuine. “God I keep forgetting how fucking naive you are. Guess it makes sense, looking back,” Jason’s hands visibly shake as he reaches for another cigarette and lights it up, voice distant as the teenager stares out the window. “Everyone wants something from everyone else. It’s fine, I guess, when you’re rich or just have something to give. But me? What the fuck do I have? A bad attitude and a worthless, ugly body.”

“You don’t have an ugly body,” Dick sighs, and it’s the truth. But he knows Jason’s never going to believe him, not when _he_ had it ingrained in their heads that they were never good enough. There was always someone prettier, skinnier, better…

“Please,” Jason rolls his eyes, and Dick barely manages to keep his mouth shut when the teen lights up another cigarette (where was he getting them from anyway?). “Everyone’s ugly compared to you. No wonder you were Daddy’s favorite.”

“Jason,” Dick tries, but Jason’s spaced out, his mind somewhere else, and Dick isn’t sure he wants to know where.

“Just go away. I want to be alone,” Jason insists. Despite everything in his mind screaming at him to stay, reminds him that this is his room and if anyone should be leaving it should be Jason. Despite all that, Dick turns on his heel and leaves, clicking the door shut behind him.

**Author's Note:**

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> 
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